I’ve been giving some thought to the Junior/Div I NAC from a week or so ago and the foil fencing I saw at the Capital Clash this weekend. For the last few years I have been patting myself on the back about my “progressive” approach to foil fencing, and felt that with some of the… Read more

In every book I’ve read about developing expertise, the author has talked about how important it is to fail in order to ultimately master a skill. To many of us coaches, that seems counter-intuitive. What’s the role of the coach in student failure? To call attention to those things the student should be trying to… Read more

Ed Korfanty once told me that saber was easy: “You either make the opponent finish too late, make the opponent finish too early, or make the opponent finish in a line you control. That’s it to saber!” Is there something similar to say about epee? Perhaps epee is just about time, both physical (your point… Read more

I was talking to a fencing mom a few weeks ago about the Junior Olympic Qualifiers in our Division. I must have sounded pretty cynical about the level of fencing I was seeing, and hinted that most of the kids at the qualifiers were probably going to do poorly once they flew across the country… Read more

One of the most irritating things I have to do when I get new students from other coaches is to convince them that a feint is an attack. Too often when I ask for a feint, the student sticks their arm out and waits for me to parry. Invariably, I don’t parry and the student… Read more

I should put “Part I” in the title, because I think there is a lot to say about the business of fencing. I meet a lot of great coaches that are terrible business people. Oddly enough, that tends to stick out more than the terrible coaches who are great business people. I wonder why that… Read more

In one of my foil lessons last night , my student was supposed to fade back in the face of my attack and set up a parry riposte. I confess that my attention was wandering during one of the repetitions of the action. She must have noticed and ignoring the action I wanted her to… Read more

As part of an article I was going to write about footwork, I had started to compile some notes on the subject. Then, I abandoned the piece half way through writing it. Footwork is a big subject, and the article was getting out of control. With too many wheels within wheels, I couldn’t find a way… Read more

In the last few years there several web sites have appeared that tell you to “throw away your fencing journal” and promise metrics on all of your bouts. These are very interesting sites (I’ve looked at myself on a few of them) but I they are missing the point. The bout score is, perhaps, the… Read more